


Other Notable Casteless

by Tikor



Series: Castebook: Casteless [9]
Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen, Lunars, Roleplaying Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 22:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14435742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: Two Casteless, one hiding in the dark, one prowling in the light.





	Other Notable Casteless

**Author's Note:**

> Serenbaum given light by the daring Chappy! We used  
> [artists and clients](https://artistsnclients.com/people/Chappy) to get in touch for the commission.

**Malik Fenn**  
Malik Fenn came from the clan of Fenn, a fiercely independent and individualistic tribe in the Northeast inland from Mela’s Fangs. Their elders remembered their fight for freedom from a tyrannical little god, and their exodus from its lands. When Malik Fenn was touched by the god Luna, he reacted poorly.

Luna, if anything, was amused, and she left Malik to his own devices. Malik led his own tribe for a generation, growing accustomed to power and having no one in the hierarchy to gainsay him. When the Silver Pact found him they spoke of all the knowledge they could grant him. They called him pup and they told stories of their true elders. That also did not go well.

Fearing the return of the Lunars he had gravely insulted, but remembering that they had spoken with others of his ‘Casteless’ kind, Malik resolved to evade the Silver Pact until he had the strength to resist them. He established a small pack of Casteless, over which he exercised some measure of leadership. But even his legendary charisma was tested when herding the (sometimes literal) cats that were the Casteless in his orbit. When every utterance that could possibly be heard as a command is seen as a challenge, when every joke could lead to a brawl, disagreements settled in blood were daily occurences. So, Malik Fenn used a tactic to combine disparate factions of a people into a cohesive whole seen throughout the ages. He dispensed with command and switched to prophecy.

He had rich material to work with. Luna in the Time of Glory seeded dozens of cults worshiping her more famous faces. One in particular, the lunar aspect of Razik, met Malik’s needs. The Silver-Horned Watcher represented Luna at her most free, at her most wild. Goddess of the crescent moon, she saw all that happened in the dark yet gave off little light herself. She was mysterious, dangerous, just like the Wyld that was said to be her very domain. Malik added some cohesive doctrine about taboos and purification, then set about proselytizing. 

The result is the most durable society of Casteless history has ever known. 

**Serenbaum**  
Far below the earth in the caves and tunnels still strewn with the bones of the Mountain Folk who died in the Great Contagion, a silver shadow slinks among the rest of the shades known as the Darkbrood. Among such outcastes, the offcast, the failed projects of the Primordials, and the banished spirits from heaven, one such was not forced out, but ostracized herself. For she is a failure in her own eyes.

Centuries ago, a Waxing Moon Lunar who once went by the name of Serenbaum was a proud member of the Deliberative. Among the Silver Crescent she moved like a gifted politician, even by Exalted standards. Any Solar who wished to gain a vote for their pet legislation sought her out when even the chance of another Lunar’s word might sway another Solar’s vote. She knew what her fellow Lunars wanted, what they needed, and what their mates did as well. Collecting favors was more than a pastime to her - it was a calling, a vocation. And those favors held vast power in the halls of the Deliberative and thus in the Creation that they ruled.

The Lunar who was once Serenbaum was content in this power. She felt it would protect her in her time of need. That it had worth, all on its own. But in the heat of the Usurpation, only her claws and artifice stood in the way of the Dragon’s wrath. That, and her Solar mate, Aidenmaus, of the Twilight Caste. When the ambush was triggered, they fought together against the flame, but Aidenmaus was wounded before they dispatched the first wave. In his pain he could not move quickly, so he told Serenbaum to meet him at his Manse where together they could weather this storm. He then promptly dematerialized in blue and white fire, as is the divine heritage of the Twilight Caste.

Serenbaum knew that she had until the next sundown to meet him there. She also knew that together in her mate’s seat of power, they could survive even if all of Creation were torn asunder around them. But this was not enough. To survive was not enough, for her pride was wounded by the Dragon-Blooded faction that had struck at her and her mate and had torn down the halls of power she so confidently strode. She had favors to call in to strike back with vengeance, and she would call them, every one. She took a small detour from the path to her Solar’s Manse. She met with the Dragon-Blooded Gens who both owed her several favors and had sworn loyalty to Aidenmaus personally. She demanded that they march on the insubordinate Dragon-Blooded who had betrayed them. But they too were in on the plot, and only through her quickness granted by Luna did she escape with her life.

So Serenbaum fled, and in her flight she was not able to reach Aidenmaus’ Manse by sundown. She heard later that it was infiltrated, and he stabbed through the back as soon as his body was made of flesh once again, all of its defensive Essence cannons unfired. She cursed herself. She should have been there, she should have cleared any hostile forces within his Manse in advance of his return, she never should have risked any diversion from that duty. The Dragon-Blooded had seemed so fractured just days before. They were attached to this Solar or that, or even if they were not sworn outright, they administered this tributary or that prefecture, fully in step with the Solars who ruled there. They fought and snapped at each other, often more viciously than the Solars who ruled them. She had not seen their betrayal coming, her favors had not saved her, and her Solar had died because of it.

Unable to face Luna, afraid and still fleeing the Dragon-Blooded, Serenbaum took to ground and hid among the Mountain Folk. While all the other mortal populations were subject to intense vetting for Solar sympathizers, the Mountain Folk were too instrumental in the lead-up to the Usurpation and too vital in the form of their continued tribute to anger with such measures. Their loyalty to the Solar’s successors was assured by the Unconquered Sun’s ancient entreaty that Authochthon geas his own creations and cemented by their mistreatment at the Deliberative’s hands throughout their reign. 

For centuries Serenbaum lived a series of double lives, full of anxiety and dread. She began to lose herself in these lives, not hearing her own name or seeing a friend she had not deceived about her identity for centuries. Somewhere along the line her Caste broke just like her brothers and sisters, likely from exposure working the underground Wyld mines with one Mountainfolk shape or another. By the time the Great Contagion came, little remained of the Lunar she once was. She clung to the painful memory of her failure to protect her mate, and to the fear of Dragon-Blooded she still expected to persecute her. When even those she had spent the centuries deceiving died, little else drove her actions; she had no anchor. To wander the tunnels alone seemed natural, fitting. Bereft of her false herd to run with, locked out of Urvar’s mighty gates, she found a new herd, the Darkbrood. She became one shadow among many, though no occult bond holds her underground like her new peers. Now she haunts their lightless caverns as one of them, and has for all of the Scarlet Empress’ reign, at least until someone reminds her of what and who she used to be.


End file.
